Game Boy photo gun shoots instant 8-bit pictures

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You know that old superstition about how getting your picture taken steals your soul? Well, this camera won’t just steal your soul, it’ll blast it right out of your body and instantly convert it into a much more retro 8-bit form.

Constructed by Russian media artist Dmitry Morozov, the “gbg-8” combines Nintendo’s classic pea soup green original Game Boy with an Arduino, a camera, optical relays, batteries, and a thermal printer into one funky, photo firearm. After scaring subjects into a portrait-ready pose by pointing a gun at them, photographers pull the trigger and take the snapshot. The device then immediately prints out the beautifully blocky 8-bit picture, Polaroid-style.

Who needs all these megapixels when you can harness the monochrome mosaic of vintage video game technology? What’s hipper than that?

Old-school Game Boy fans might remember that the handheld featured two accessories very similar to the ones used here. Working in tandem, the Game Boy Camera and the Game Boy Printer could also produce retro, receipt-like photos such as these in beloved games including Austin Powers: Oh, Behave! and Mary-Kate and Ashley Pocket Planner. Okay, they were compatible with a few good games too, like the Pokémon series, but overall they were some pretty obscure peripherals.

Morozov doesn’t say anything about using those exact pieces of hardware, but it looks like they were certainly inspirations for creating the device.

Check out Morozov’s site for more info on gbg-8 as well as “::vtol::,” the 2007 experimental, electronic Moscow art project he created the photo gun for in the first place. Maybe Instagram should look into making some of these. It’s already got a great built-in filter.